LEIF ERIKSON

THE FIRST EUROPEAN TO SET FOOT IN AMERICA

HE STILL STANDS

He is still there. In Reykjavik. Back to the church. Face turned west toward a grey Atlantic sky.

The statue has stood there since 1930 — a gift from the United States to Iceland, bronze and

permanent, one hand raised as if pointing at something the rest of the world hadn’t noticed yet.

Five hundred years before Columbus. A thousand years before anyone thought to put up a

statue. Leif Erikson sailed west into water no European chart had ever drawn and found a

continent waiting on the other side.

He called it Vinland. He stayed one winter. He came home. And for five centuries, the world

forgot he had ever gone.